I don't often talk about World of Warcraft, even though I am still playing it regularly and enjoying it a lot. That's because I figure it won't be interesting for most of you, since I think almost none of my lj friends play. But fun things have been happening recently, so I thought I'd write about my entry into the world of raiding.

( a brief introduction to WoW, and why we must hang together )

( lf raid )

Since I spent the previous two weekends either travelling or having a guest, and since the weather here has taken a decided turn for the hot and humid, I spent last weekend inside doing things for myself, including lots of chores I'd been meaning to do for awhile but never quite found time for, but also more enjoyable things.

I had summer plans for piano and sports, and those are actually going well. I'm practicing piano more than I did during the school year, at least, and what I really need to do is either magically find my metronome that I've searched several times for, or just buy another one. I'm working on some Mozart, and I think it's essential. It was inspiring to hear Martha, my Berkeley piano teacher, play Mozart. She did it with a brilliance and clarity that I felt were both impressive and entirely appropriate. I've also been running some, weightlifting some, swimming some, and doing yoga some. So at least thus far, I haven't lost anything I gained for my knee during physical therapy. I found it interesting, actually, that my therapist told me that even if I stopped exercising, I'd still be much better off knee-wise than I was before this round of physical therapy, because I've changed some ways of moving that were unstable.

But what I've really spent a lot of my spare time on the last few weeks has been World of Warcraft and Harry Potter. I know, I know, but it's been really fun and I'm enjoying myself immensely. I got my first heroic key for my main in WoW, and finally some cool-looking gear. What I really need are the Pauldrons of Wild Magic, which look awesome and have lightning playing around them. And I've been rereading the HP books, in preparation for the last one, and... I forgot how wonderful they are. I love the stories and the detailed world so much, and I had also forgotten how difficult those books are to put down. This led to also rewatching the movies, and the result is that I'm now really excited for the fifth movie and just dying for the last book. I know, I'm imitating the summer activities of adolescents everywhere, but it's such fun.

Since Ben is in LA, we are putting back into practice all the things we learned the last time we were long distance. For example, to brush off when you just keep missing each other on the phone, and that phone > IM and videoconferencing is really nice. But one thing we didn't both have the first time around is World of Warcraft, and let me tell you, WoW plus Google Talk makes a really nice way to hang out with your long-distance boyfriend. :)

I have no more problem sets to do this semester! Huzzah! I'm actually completely done with statistical mechanics, where my entire grade consists of my five homework grades and the professor is just 'looking for an excuse to give us all A's'. This is gratifying because each of those homework sets was extremely difficult. I've never before had homework where each problem consistently took several hours of work, research, and full use of every resource available to me. I have to write a paper for liquid crystals, which is due Christmas (but I want to write it before I leave Philly, on the 19th). And I have an actual exam in quantum, which is technically a portion of my qualifying exam grade, next Friday. So I intend to spend next week studying for the exam and writing that paper.

Ben is mostly better, though still a little snuffly. I feel bad, since I was violently ill for less than 24 hours, but he was sick for nearly a week, and rather sick for four days. Oh well, I can't control his immune system response. I don't have a great grasp of biology, but maybe someone can enlighten me... say he got infected with both the virus, which I was carrying, and some of my body's antibodies to it. Well, I guess my first question is, does your body even produce antibodies for gastroenteritis, since the main reaction seems to be violent expulsion of the contents of the entire alimentary canal. But my second question is, is it possible for a person to have an immune reaction to someone else's antibodies? It seems unlikely that Ben was infected with both my stomach flu and some other cold, which I never got, at the same time. But it also seems unlikely that he would react so differently to what I got.

In WoW, my main finally hit 60. :) This means I can make more money by completing quests, and that I can try some of the endgame instances. I'm in a guild, but no 60s in my guild are ever online to run anything. Bah.

And I concluded that living in California for five years did not kill my tolerance for cold. It's been in the 30s here in the day, and I walk about 20 minutes to and from campus. And it's totally fine. I am happy, though, that my mom gave me those down jackets for Christmas last year. I never used them in Berkeley except when I went skiing at Tahoe, but here they are really great.

Ew, so I came into my office today in order to grade the homeworks for 101, and the heater near my desk is emitting a strange smell and dripping water onto the carpet. It smells burny and gross, and initially I thought I had some food going bad in my desk or something. Plus half of the homeworks weren't in my mailbox, so I couldn't do half of what I had planned.

I will not miss grading.

Ben and I had planned to get out this weekend, but on Saturday morning Ben came down sick... but not with the stomach flu! No, he got a regular cold, which mostly incapacitated him. So all we really did was go food/clothes/shoe shopping, and sit around our house and make tea, play cribbage, that sort of thing. I'm sort of afraid that I'll get the cold he has now, and obviously he won't get the stomach flu, because he would have gotten it by now. We've been watching some shows on our netflix, namely Cowboy Bebop and Rome (the HBO series). I like the art style and the music in Cowboy Bebop a lot, although the episodes we saw had a theme of, main characters stumble into elaborate plot, have some hijinks, and eventually let a huge bounty slip from their fingers. Rome is... well, it's very well-done, and although it feels similar to the many other classical civilization movies/tv shows I've seen, it's much more realistic, though that often means it's really gross. For example, we see people crucified much more graphically than I've seen (though I never watched The Passion), we see a soldier casually raping a shepherdess before going home to his wife, we see pornographic theater... we see all sorts of things that are definitely historically accurate, but are also often excised from tv shows.

I also played WoW some this weekend, and I mention this specifically for Erin and Josh... priest is a really fun class to be! My main is a shaman, but I am playing some with a priest that I initially created with Ben, and it's really cool... you can spec so that you hardly ever run out of mana, and you have lots of protection tricks that are far superior to what other classes have. You have a really good ranged weapon (wands) and even though you suck at melee, I don't even really notice. Plus priests are one of the most sought-after classes for endgame stuff and instances, although I'm not sure I'll really get this character up to 60. It just takes so long. But they are really fun to play.

I'm pretty much over the stomach flu (i.e., gastroenteritis), and today I felt mostly up to snuff. I was glad to stay home yesterday, and I ended up feverish most of the day and sleeping a lot, though not actively vomiting, for which I was grateful. But unfortunately, many of my professors are trying to fit in problem sets at the end of the semester, so from my 24 hours of inactivity, I became HORRIBLY BEHIND in a stat mech problem set, due tomorrow, and a quantum problem set due Friday. I spent maybe nine hours on the stat mech today and am about 85% done (I'll finish in the couple hours I have before class tomorrow), and haven't yet started quantum. Bah. It's not nearly as long as stat mech, though, nor as difficult. And I'm much better at quantum.

I did do one cool thing today, though, after working for about five hours and feeling wickedly burnt out. Apparently each year Ben's advisor here, Norm Badler, buys the SIGGRAPH video of nifty movies that they show and then screens it for Penn students. (He has done this for nigh on thirty years now, originally with 16 mm film, he says.) So I went with Ben to watch all the SIGGRAPH movies from 2006, which was really cool. Ben claimed it was a substandard crop compared to previous years, but some still had very impressive design, and I really enjoyed the cell one, just because of how effectively it visualized all sorts of cool processes inside the cell. I still toy with the idea of going into biophysics, let me tell you.

Sometimes I try to do things because I think they will be an interesting experience. So when Ben told me that one of the things he needed to do today was dress up in a motion capture suit and dance around for his movements to be recorded on a computer, my response was, that's awesome! Can I come?

It's actually a lot of work to put on a motion capture suit. It took 20-30 minutes for the one they had, which only has 30 emitters. But basically, the person wearing the suit first puts on a tight black velcro bodysuit, which covers the trunk and limbs but also parts of the hands and feet, and also a headband. You then velcro emitters onto the suit and plug them into a control box. There are emitters for the big joints, several for the hands and feet, and some defining planes in the body: four on the head, four around the waist, and two on the center lines of the chest and back. The velcroing and connecting takes most of the time. Then you need to velcro all the wires to the body using little strips of velcro, so that the person can move without impediment. You also have to be sure not to block any of the emitters with cables from other emitters, which can be tricky in the area of the waist where the control box is attached.

The way the emitters work is pretty straight-forward; they are infrared emitters, and you do the motion-capture stuff in a frame (the edges of a cube, basically) which is lined with hundreds of infrared cameras, which triangulate the location in the cube of each of the emitters. One trick that Ben used when one of the emitters didn't seem to be working is that while you can't see the infrared with your eye, the camera in your cell phone can see it (because the CCD is slightly infrared-sensitive). So if the emitters are on and you look at them with your cell phone camera, you can see if they're working or not.

Ben had to record a t-pose (think crucifix), which is a good neutral alignment pose, and then a walk cycle. And because it takes a lot of time to put the suit on, he also did a handstand, jumping jacks, and some running and sudden stops, in case he could use some of that footage for later projects. The data collection took about 5 minutes, compared to all that time setting up the suit. And of course, the more high-res you want your output to be, the more time you have to spend fiddling with it to get all the emitters to be detected reliably. Plus there's the time spent taking off the suit, which is considerable.

They also had a big screen and two projectors, which we didn't use, but which can be used with the suit to do virtual reality. I know that Ben spends more time programming and deriving than he spends playing with this stuff, but it's soooo interesting! He said that if he ever needs motion capture data for any projects later on, he'll use me as a subject. :)

I've sort of hit the jackpot with professors this semester. My quantum prof is pretty good: clear and organized. My stat mech prof is great: ebullient, knowledgeable, eminently enthusiastic. And my liquid crystals prof is hilarious and really loves his subject. He jokes a lot, calls on people a lot, and teaches engagingly about a fascinating subject. I'm really excited for this semester.

( life with ben )

Also, the Penn campus is just beautiful. It has a lot of lovely Gothic architecture, which I love, and many beautiful green areas. The physics building itself isn't the loveliest, but I am getting the hang of the layout. The wiki entry on it is kind of funny; I checked it out a couple weeks ago and it was more... vitriolic. It's much nicer than LeConte, though.

+ finding the physics library is right around the corner from my office

+ going to the physics welcome party with lots of free food and beer

+ Ben breaking down and trying WoW with me

:D

I think it's really funny that the new race in world of warcraft made the headlines that I got from the NYTimes this morning. I'll disable my account over the summer, I guess, since I won't have any opportunity to play. But then will I re-enable it in the fall? I don't know if I should. Maybe, though.

I'm getting together with some people tonight to try to work out a real list of cities for Ben and I to visit. We'll almost certainly take trains from Paris to Rome, with lots of fun stops, and then maybe from Rome to Berlin for a few days and then back to Paris to return to the U.S. I think we've definitely ruled out Milan, I'm hearing fun things about Lyon, and I'm still flip-flopping on Nice. Almost certain stops include Paris, Lyon, Geneva, Marseille, Venice, Florence, and Rome.

And I still need to buy a dress for Steph's wedding... blargh. I hate dress-shopping and I rarely wear full-out dresses, which accounts for my owning three, none of which are black. I also don't think this is the time of year when it's easy to find black dresses... does anyone have recommendations of places to shop? God I hate buying clothes. But the wedding should be really cool and touching. I think I also need better black dress shoes, that are more practical.

There was a little fair for Earth Day at LBL by the cafeteria which my coworkers and I stopped by on our way back from lunch. It was mostly signing up for things and free plants, but what was cool was that they had three Segways they were letting people ride in the parking lot. I remember when it came out and it seemed like a lot of hype for something that was not really that cool. But you know, they're really fun to ride. At first it feels very bizarre and unstable, and after about 30 seconds you can go slow and it isn't so bad, and after a couple minutes you're fine. I think it would be a blast to get used to riding one. There's a guy at LBL who rides one to work every day, who can ride it up stairs and everything. They are also, of course, super-expensive, not good exercise, and very silly-looking, especially if you wear a helmet (which you should if you're actually using it as a mode of transportation).

But they're soooo fun!

This is the most I've updated in one day in like, years.

Top 20 Geek Books (bold the ones you've read)
1. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams
2. 1984 -- George Orwell
3. Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- Philip K Dick
5. Neuromancer -- William Gibson
6. Dune -- Frank Herbert
7. I, Robot -- Isaac Asimov
8. Foundation -- Isaac Asimov
9. The Colour of Magic -- Terry Pratchett
10. Microserfs -- Douglas Coupland
11. Snow Crash -- Neal Stephenson
12. Watchmen -- Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
13. Cryptonomicon -- Neal Stephenson
14. Consider Phlebas -- Iain M Banks
15. Stranger in a Strange Land -- Robert Heinlein
16. The Man in the High Castle -- Philip K Dick
17. American Gods -- Neil Gaiman
18. The Diamond Age -- Neal Stephenson
19. The Illuminatus! Trilogy -- Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
20. Trouble with Lichen - John Wyndham

I think my favorite books on this list were Hitchhiker's Guide, I Robot, Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, and American Gods. I have to say, I didn't like Stranger in a Strange Land that much. It was great to begin with and then got really bizarre. And like Juhi said months ago, I'm really surprised not to see Ender's Game. I also haven't heard of 12, 14, or 20 at all. And I really want to read Philip K Dick, especially 4. But I still have to get through the bag of books that Ben's parents loaned me.

Thanks very much, everyone who wished my knee the best. I went to a doctor on Wednesday, who was a little crazy but very nice, and who referred me for an MRI. He confirmed that I have no bone problems and he also checked for problems with the cartilage discs, and said they were okay. He said he was about 80% sure that I have pulled my cruciate ligaments, but it was possible that I tore something. Until the MRI, I have to pretend I have a tear, which means as little walking as possible, even with the crutches. He was very helpful in explaining the vagaries of how my knee works, and recommended that I go off Advil and on buffered aspirin, which has reduced the swelling quite a bit. I wasn't able to get an MRI appointment earlier than Monday night, so at that point I'll know for sure.

My bed rest has been barely productive. I played a lot of Warcraft, both on my troll shaman and on my shiny new night elf druid. I finished A Dictionary of Maqiao, which is a great book on language and China during the cultural revolution. I also read Kitchen Confidential, which is testosterone-packed, really interesting, and has just a great authorial voice. And it also makes you very hungry.

I think it also helps that I've had Girl Scout cookies to help me get through this. Mmmmm... tasty, tasty solace.

Dear World of Warcraft,

You came into my life at exactly the right time. Not a lot of schoolwork, lots of free time, lots of need to relax and take a break. This is the first time I could have spent so many hours on you in the last 6 years, and you showed up right then. I know sometimes you're unreliable, like how you lagged when I was in an enemy camp and made me die because I couldn't defend myself. I know sometimes your quests are silly, like killing guys for an item that has a 3% drop rate. I know I get bored running very long distances to find new stuff, or running back from the graveyard to find my corpse... over and over and over. But you're like crack... there's a reason why two million people are addicted.

your new best friend,
Jessamyn

ps. why did you make the elite quests so FREAKING HARD?

To be honest, the last week has been kind of overwhelming. There's getting into graduate school, which has given me unspeakable joy. There's my grandmother's death and the ensuing family drama, which I want to write about but not right now, which has given me sadness and anger. Ben heard from his first graduate school too today; he got into Penn, which is awesome. I have high hopes for my chances with Penn. We'll see.

Anyhow, notable events of the past week include:

( the portuguese restaurant )

( the rosicrucian egyptian museum )

( world of warcraft )

( russia: leningrad and east-west )

I really like this whole having-free-time thing. It's fun.

Anyone home on a Saturday night must love Trek, and most people who love Trek love Picard. So here's something to spice up your evening.

The Picard Song: Funny remix of TNG quotes.

A Special Musical Number: This is BIZARRE, but awesome.

Patrick Stewart in a whole new light: Him playing himself in a guest appearance on a sitcom. Also funny.

I miss Star Trek. I pine for the ST:TNG DVDs.

All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph! Adventure. Heh! Excitement. Heh! A Jedi craves not these things. You are reckless!

Throughout my experiences of grad school applications, I've fought against living in the future and thinking, 'I just have to get through this and then things will be better'. I've done okay at it. But I'm really feeling that now as I buckle down to study for my quantum final and finish my apps. My SOP, revised once again, is okay but now too long. I should start submitting applications tomorrow, though. And soon I should know my GRE score, for better or worse.

It's nice that I'm not as stressed as I was last year. Really nice. But it means that I can execute extreme acts of avoidance against what I want to do the least, like spending an entire day playing KOTOR2 instead of working on Saturday, and then doing all of my other work before getting down to my SOP today. Let me reassure you, KOTOR2 is still awesome. I wish I had the hours to finish it before I go on vacation.

Good luck on finals, those of you that have them.

btw, I need these t-shirts.

thanks to 14cyclenotes...


and special thanks to juhi...


EDIT: I've shown the first shirt to some people, and none of them recognized it as being from Star Wars. Come ON, people!

Ben was up for the weekend. He brought up my really cool birthday present, which is this beautiful enamelled wood cribbage board with pegs that he made himself. We used it a few times, and also watched a fair amount of Farscape, which is very tasty to my sci-fi starved brain. We went over to Hollis' and had a pre-Thanksgiving, mainly because at real Thanksgiving, it's unlikely we'll have a turkey (Ben's parents and little sister are nearly vegetarian and kosher, so we can only have fish there). We had turkey, cranberry-grapefruit sauce, Ben's southwest stuffing, potatoes au gratin, and a pecan pie from Fatapple's. And an extremely unpopular salad.

I finished my application for the NSF GRFP, which I will certainly not get, but it was a much easier application this time. I hope I find my grad school apps easier as well, and I reeeeally hope that I find the physics GRE to be less evil and more self-evident.

The rioting in France is really scary to me. it's exactly the sort of mob mentality and violence that I don't understand and that I fear in others. I probably don't know enough about French politics and society to be able to say whether it's justified or not... I do recognize that at times such things are necessary.

I gave my talk to the CCD meeting on Monday, and that went very well. I was much less nervous than last week when I gave it to Natalie and Kyle, and it felt much better reasoned and smoother. It also certainly had fewer errors; Natalie's editing session was a great help. I got a lot of nice comments on it, which was surprising and nice. Natalie came up to me in the hall today (she was on travel yesterday, so didn't see my talk), and said she'd heard I had a 'great practice run', and was similarly effusive about my beam size measurements and the velocity saturation stuff that I've been doing with Don. Natalie's a very kind boss, but she isn't overly generous with praise, so that meant a lot to me. Another cool thing was that this guy, Henry, was at my talk yesterday, and he's one of the managers on a more general level for SNAP (as opposed to just managing the CCD project). I was a little nervous to have him in the audience, because sometimes he nitpicks very stubbornly at meetings, but then it looked like he fell asleep during my talk, and he didn't ask any questions. Phew. But then today in the hallway, he tells me how he didn't know I was an undergrad, and thought I was a grad student, and how my talk was really great and he knows it'll go really well. Wow!

And then today I got my midterm back, the one that I took on my birthday, and got the fifth highest score on it (out of 26 people). There are two ways to look at it, the first being that probably no one else has taken the course before and I should be the top scorer, not #5. But the second way is that this class kicked my ass and eventually contributed heavily to keeping me out of grad school, and I OWNED it. Ha. There's still a second midterm and a final to go, but that first midterm score makes me very happy. :)

To update on the third aspect of 'improvements I will make to get into graduate school', I missed the November physics GRE registration deadline, because I'm a freaking idiot, so I'll try testing standby in November but may not be able to actually test until December. I signed up for the December date. This isn't a disaster, but it's bad, because it takes so long to get your scores once you test. I'm going to bring my practice tests to PR with me, mostly for the long flights but also for some studying during the week.

Btw, I never mentioned it but I finished KOTOR, and it was fantastic. Best game ever. I played it the first time as a light side Soldier/Consular, but then nearly completed it again as a dark side Scoundrel/Guardian. When I was almost to the end the second time, something corrupted my game, and suddenly I was unable to do anything other than attack people, and thus couldn't move the plot through to the end. Grrrrrr. But I may do it again as a DS character, someday. Ben got me KOTOR2 for our anniversary, and it is similarly fantastic. The characters are much less black and white than they were in KOTOR, and the ethics of the game are a lot more subtle. There are also more options in terms of battle, items, etc., which I love but could have been confusing if I weren't already familir with KOTOR gameplay. I won't ever be a gamer, but I do love my Star Wars.